Archive for February, 2017

It’s Wednesday and you know what that means — time to beat the Business Cape Breton (BCB) drum! This week we’ve learned that BCB is both an outside organization immune to the rules governing departments of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality AND the CBRM’s “economic development entity,” immune to theRead More

In my October column, “Roads to Hell: Nuclear Waste on the Move,” I reported on legal efforts to block shipments of highly-radioactive liquid waste from the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories in Ontario to the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina, a journey of over 2,000 kilometerss passing the GreatRead More

What is this PowerSchool of which Nova Scotian teachers speak? The datafication (a word I thought I’d made up but which turns out to be real) of P-12 education happened after my time in the Nova Scotia public system, so I had to do some reading (a little skill I pickedRead More

What to do this week This week I want to talk about stratifying and scarifying. These are two tricks for germinating hard to start seeds such as the seeds of many perennial flowers. I mostly concentrate on food gardening but perennial flowers can be so nice, and lots of themRead More

The Nova Scotia New Democratic Party made a freedom of information application to the Nova Scotia government last December requesting: All communication (including emails, letter and other electronic messages) briefing notes and other documents related to An Act Respecting a Teacher’s [sic] Professional Agreement. The request referred to legislation that Education MinisterRead More

CBRM Council last week approved a budget that nixed the 2017/18 heavy garbage pickup while re-upping the CBRM Blossoming Program. The reason given for canceling heavy garbage — i.e. Cape Breton Christmas — was that the CBRM already provided such a service following the Thanksgiving floods, never mind that the post-flood collection onlyRead More

Water, water I have a confession to make: I like listening to people discussing things they know about, no matter how dry (or in this case, wet) the subject matter. It’s a trait that seems to be growing stronger over time — I suspect it may even be a response to ourRead More

I’ve been trying to figure out what bugs me so much about the decision to rename Sydney’s downtown “The Waterfront District” and I’ve finally put my finger on it: coming up with a fancy name for a neighborhood should be the final step in a revitalization plan, not the first. Labeling theRead More

I have something to confess. For someone in my position it is, well, more than a little embarrassing. An affront, if you will, to my public persona. I have spent money I could ill afford pursuing this, this interest, to the chagrin of my long-suffering children. To this strange compulsionRead More

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]f you happen to be a “none” (no, not a “nun”), you’re one of a growing number of people (more than a billion worldwide actually, especially in America and Europe) who identify themselves as having no religious affiliation, even if they were brought up in homes where religion was practiced,Read More